Visionaries

Recently there has been a growth in infotainment programs on television. These programs combine news with entertainment facts (e.g. news about celebrities). A Dutch television show called RTL Boulevard (link in Dutch) has dominated Dutch TV in this area. The main host of the show is Daphne Bunskoek, a Dutch celebrity who has hosted TV shows on the Dutch MTV (TMF) and hosted Goedemorgen Nederland, a morning news show. Co-host Albert Verlinde is also a celebrity and very active as a producer of theatre. Bunskoek and Verlinde form the core presentation team, but here is always a third ‘specialist’ present (e.g. Bram Moszkowicz or Peter van der Vorst). Their specialties are topics like royalty, crime or lifestyle and they are often celebrities themselves.

During the last elections Jan Peter Balkenende (link in Dutch), the premier of the Netherlands, joined Bunskoek and Verlinde and hosted the show with them. Boorstin (1992) describes how politicians use the press in their advantage and how they create news for the press. This leads to pseudo-events, planned, misleading and ambiguous ‘news items’. With his co-hosting of RTL Boulevard Balkenende created a news item for the press and gained a lot of free publicity for the elections this way.

This example shows that today’s pseudo-events go even further than Boorstin describes. Politicians don’t only use the news to impose their so-called ‘leaks’ of important information, but they use infotainment shows for their propaganda and image building. Balkenende has the image of being an intellectual 'Harry Potter' and the voters can’t relate to him very well. His appearance on RTL Boulevard, a show that is not known for its intellectual value, made him look like a regular guy. The movie below (in Dutch) was an item on the show about the involvement of Balkenende during the preparations of RTL Boulevard. It is filled with one-liners from the premier and shows him in control of all the situations, sometimes even dominating the hosts, the strong music emphasizes this. It creates the image of Balkenende as a powerful, but friendly leader. Balkenende shows his knowledge about celebrities by gossiping about Tom Cruise with some of the staff. He shows his friendly, human side when he assures Bunskoek that she can speak informal with him. He makes several jokes and puts Bunskoek and Verlinde in their place when they show up too late for a meeting. It’s a side of the premier the voters have never seen before and I question if it are his own words and one-liners, I think the whole item is a fraud.

His performance on RTL Boulevard has helped Balkenende destroy the image of the intellectual Harry Potter and made him a down-to-earth man. Bunskoek and Verlinde act like they like Balkenende very much, they gossip with him and while the show is going on he can even bring his political agenda to the table.

If pseudo-events aren’t limited to the news, where will it end? Will these events pop up everywhere and how will that change society? What is true and what isn’t? Who can the public trust to give truthful information?

For more on the theory of Boorstin see: A postitive force in the news

Literature
Boorstin, D. J. (1992). The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.